Rampage: Total Destruction

How much is nostalgia worth to you?

The Rampage license has been a bit of a lost sheep over the last few generations of gaming. The original arcade production gave gamers a platform for uninterrupted mindless destruction. Two monsters would enter an area, wreak havoc on an area, and move onto the next helpless city. It was basic, but it was a hell of a good time. As the industry evolved, however, Rampage didn't stand the test of time. Dozens of iterations swarmed the shelves, but nothing could hold up to the original mayhem of classic Rampage. While Rampage: Total Destruction has stuck to its side-scroller roots, it offers little to progress the series while managing to break a few high points along the way. It may be 3D, it may have over 25 characters, but it just isn't worth the investment.

Rampage: Total Destruction follows a similar formula to the original arcade classic, attempting to keep solid in its roots and progress on the somewhat basic gameplay of the 80's masterpiece. For Total Destruction, Midway tried to elaborate on what made Rampage a hit, banking on fully destructible environments, busy city streets ripe for the wrecking and above all else, monsters with serious attitude. In fact, Rampage: Total Destruction includes an unprecedented cast of characters, headlining with the original stars of George, Lizzie and Ralph, along with more than 25 others to unlock.

Each character can also be upgraded, offering different skills that can be used in the Campaign mode, Vs. battle or various multiplayer scenarios. In fact, the game's environments do the series justice as well, offering seven different major cities, teamed with fully destructible 3-D environments. All in all it seems like a perfect equation for a solid arcade title, but the entire package is crippled with some of the most clunky gameplay the series has yet to see.

We couldn't agree more, billboard.

For starters, Total Destruction continues to bank on the classic 2D feel of the original arcade, incorporating the 3D environments in levels that scroll primarily left and right, with only a small amount of depth to explore. Characters can walk into the street to pick up cars or traverse into the background in a very minimal amount to interact with buildings, which really is the extent of the 3D level design. The idea was to keep the gameplay in its classic design, so players won't be able to walk around the back of buildings or free-roam through cities. While we would have loved to ravish entire towns a la Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee, the 2D presentation is understandable.

Unfortunately, the small amount of 3D control included actually hurts the gameplay rather than helping it, adding in new issues of orientation to the previously intuitive design. For example, the original Rampage had characters walk up to buildings, pressing up to climb up them. Simple, right? In Total Destruction, however, object interaction isn't as seamless, as the up control will move your character into the background. Players will have to continuously press against a desired object to interact with it, which feels very clunky. In fact, you'll have no way of knowing if an object can actually be climbed or not, so many times it'll take a session of trial and error, walking against buildings and objects for a few seconds to see if your monster sticks to it. It's simply unintuitive.

In fact, the compromised gameplay can be found everywhere in Total Destruction. When climbing buildings in the original Rampage arcade, characters would move tile to tile, making it easy to determine which specific area of the building the monster would hit. In Total Destruction, however, the animations are more fluid and fleshed out, but the gameplay fails to retain the tile-to-tile feel, so knocking a building down will take considerably more time. Everyone remembers the feel of hitting block after block as George progresses up the side of a tower. In Total Destruction, a good chunk of time will be wasted as characters will repetitively hit the same area of the building, forcing the player to readjust their orientation slightly. It just doesn't give the same feel. That type of trial and error gameplay exists virtually everywhere, whether it's jumping from building to building, picking up cars and people, interacting with other monsters or avoiding in-level danger zones. The progression graphically is obviously needed, but the gameplay needed to remain distinct and crisp regardless of how the actions play out.